Slavery's Ghosts

Canada remains haunted by a past it hardly acknowledges

- ESI EDUGYAN

MY FRIEND’S PARENTS retired to a homestead in northern Alberta, a great rambling estate of some hundred acres with bright rolling grasses and a handsome barn-style home. One summer, he invited me up for a weekend. We spent sun-filled days racing on ATVs; eating fresh apricots, plums, and wild strawberries pale with dust from the brambles; and swimming in the artificial lake in the clear hours before the mosquitoes thickened. In wintertime, that same lake hardened to a gleaming blue sheet that drew skaters from as far, he swore, as Edmonton. Through the snow-glazed kitchen window, you could hear the brisk hissing sounds of their blades striking the ice.

But summer was the most beautiful season. Our weekend was one of lazy contentment as if we knew we were exactly where we were meant to be. We sat around dinners laced with overripe tomatoes, the sun sweet in their flesh, talking late into the night about other places, other times.

Years later, I was surprised to hear that the property had been sold.

“Did your parents miss city life?” I asked.

But that wasn’t it. What had happened was altogether stranger.

It has been years since I first heard this story, years since I’ve spoken to my friend, but I will always remember the awe in his voice that day. The problems at his parents’ home had started simply, incrementally. After a morning in the city, they had returned in the late afternoon to discover that the furniture in the living room had shifted slightly. They could just make out the impressions of the furniture’s feet in the carpet’s pile, an inch to the right. They thought nothing of it, simply nudged everything back into place. But then it happened again, and then again. They called in a friend who worked in construction; he could find nothing awry with the house.